


Holiday Hideaway

by paintedrecs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Christmas, Holidays, M/M, Office Party, POV Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Stiles makes a daring escape from his office holiday party, he runs into Derek Hale, the scorchingly attractive coworker he's never managed to work up the nerve to talk to. Outside of the office, Derek seems less intimidating, especially when he's sitting on a park bench petting dogs.</p><p>Maybe Stiles will finally have the chance to come up with something clever to say to him. Like...well, why doesn't he just start with "hi"?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holiday Hideaway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rini/gifts).



> This was written for mysliceoffun for Sterek Secret Santa and was supposed to be 300-3,000 words, so I wasn't REALLY supposed to let it stretch to nearly 6k. Even so, it's only a snapshot of their relationship in the making.
> 
> Comments and kudos keep me warm and fuzzy and motivated to keep on writing!

Stiles made it through approximately five minutes of the office holiday party before shooting frantic glances at possible exit routes. Blocked. Every last one of them, by clumps of coworkers who would probably notice if he barrel-rolled onto the floor and under a desk for the duration.

His dreams of escaping dashed, he reluctantly entered the potluck line, slotted between Bobby from Sales and Daphne from HR, who had glared at him in the elevator that morning, as though she'd never seen him before in her life. Nevermind that he'd been working there for three years and had most assuredly spoken to her on several occasions. Including when she’d walked him through his initial hiring paperwork.

It was the hoodie, maybe. He'd started slumping back into them a few weeks earlier, giving in to the cold bite in the air, his deep-rooted dislike of the dress shirts he buttoned himself into most days, and the general demotivating unhappiness that fell over him at this time of the year. He'd thought through it, though, opting for a red one in honor of the festivities. It was as much holiday spirit as he could muster. But Daphne had clutched her purse tightly, staring at him in increasing unease as the elevator crept to their floor.

“Can I help you?” she'd asked stiffly before the doors opened.

“No?” he'd said, pushing his hood back and looking up from his phone, and she'd scurried off to her office, shutting the door like a tiny, strange mole.

Now she was glaring daggers into the back of his neck. He wasn't sure what his suspected crime was: perhaps sneaking past the security guard downstairs for the sole purpose of stealing a slice of her nasty fruitcake, or whatever it was she'd contributed this year.

Last year, Stiles had bought a pie, even taking it out of its grocery store box so it'd look like he'd put in some actual effort. He'd thought about it this year but had concluded that he didn't particularly give a fuck. 

He poked the serving fork into the first dish, which responded with a forlorn squelch and no hint as to its ingredients. He left it alone, hoping to find something palatable by the table’s end, but he hadn't counted on Bobby butting his nose into other people’s business.

“What's wrong with you? You haven't gotten anything,” he accused him in a booming, too-loud voice, frowning at Stiles’s empty plate as though it was a personal insult. Maybe it was; the items weren't labeled, so for all he knew, he'd made a disgusted face over the cherished Finstock family recipe for soggy dumplings and wilted leeks.

“I've been scoping it all out first to see what I want,” he tried, but caved and spooned noodles from the giant crockpot Greenberg from Accounting dragged out for every holiday lunch. Ordinarily, any mac and cheese would be a safe choice, but Greenberg had a special skill that involved creating the most bland, tasteless food imaginable.

Bobby frowned harder, until Stiles added a gooey pile from some chunky green dish, and Daphne made a judgmental tsking sound in her throat. He gave up.

He hovered over the dessert table for the appropriate amount of time, exclaiming politely over the cookies that Amber’s sticky-fingered children always helped her bake, and the fruitcake that looked like it’d been studded with moldy olives. When he saw an opening - everyone’s attention wrapped up in the food or inane conversation, no one’s eyes on him - he fled, hurrying through the rows of cubicles until the office party zone was out of sight.

He looked around, furtively, and dropped his plate into the kitchen compost bin before making a run for the stairs. Outside the building, he sighed in relief and leaned his head against the cold stone, deciding what to do next. 

First step: find something that was actually edible. Second: locate a sunny spot where he could sit for the next hour and a half, soaking in whatever fresh air he could until he had to return to that stifling office.

The first part was easy enough. He picked up a couple of slices of pizza from a shop he frequented more than he’d prefer to admit, and wrapped them carefully in tinfoil so he could carry them to a better location. He had a couple of options in mind and let his feet carry him to the one a few blocks farther from the office - a small park with benches scattered around the edges, where people often brought their dogs to play.

He was congratulating himself on his successful getaway when he turned the corner, his favorite bench in sight, but he stopped short when he realized someone else was already sitting on it.

That someone being not only a familiar face from his office, but _Derek Hale_ , the scorchingly attractive Accounts Manager he'd been working up the nerve to talk to for the past three years. Basically, since the day he'd looked up from his paperwork in Daphne’s office and seen Derek walking by, in a well-pressed suit jacket and dress pants that cupped his ass beautifully.

He hesitated. His entire goal was to get away from the holiday crush and to avoid uncomfortable interactions with coworkers who were acquaintances, at best. The logical course of action was therefore to spin around before he was seen and head back to the other area he'd been considering, where he could sit alone with his pizza and his thoughts.

That sounded incredibly depressing, even to him. He bounced on the balls of his feet for a moment, indecisive. Derek hadn't seen him; he could carry on as he'd been doing for years - seeing that tall, broad-shouldered frame turning the corner and dashing away in panic because he hadn't come up with anything clever or intriguing to say yet.

After three years of not perfecting the right pickup line, he had to admit it probably wasn't going to happen. But Derek was - how could he put into words what made him so intriguing, and consequently so terrifying to approach? He was impossibly handsome, sure, but everything he’d heard about him over the years pointed to equal measures of brilliance and well-earned respect. He was ruthless when it came to making the company money; he handled the top-earning accounts, not because they were given to him, but because everything turned to gold in his hardworking hands. He was generous with the team he managed. He was quiet in the hallways and breathtakingly eloquent in meetings. He was - he was looking his way. Shit. And lifting a hand in greeting.

He waved back with his handful of pizza. Derek wanted to be alone, too, or he wouldn't be sitting out here during the terrible potluck, but. It was a fair-sized bench. He could sit at the other end of it. Eat his pizza. Companionably watch the dogs in silence. Finally say hi to the guy he'd been fascinated by for far too long, and suck it up if the reality didn’t match his unreasonably lofty expectations.

“Hi,” he said when he was close enough. Derek hadn't looked away, which made the walk awkward as hell - he knew he kept doing uncontrollably weird things with his face, trying to communicate how casual and natural this whole encounter was, but Derek merely twitched his eyebrows in response, quietly meeting his gaze. He was amused, maybe. Or annoyed. Pondering how to politely tell Stiles to fuck off. It was hard to tell; part of the reason Stiles hadn't spoken to him before was that Derek never broke out of his intense, serious expressions around the office.

He seemed softer now, though, his hands dangling loosely between his knees, grass brushing against his polished dress shoes. 

“Hi,” he said back.

This was going well.

“Mind if I join you?”

Derek inclined his head in a gesture that could be read as a “go ahead,” so Stiles sat down - not quite at the opposite end of the bench, but with sufficient distance between them for Derek to not feel cornered.

“Nice day,” he tried again, setting the warm packet of pizza on his legs. “I'd thought about going to see how the geese are doing, but the wind gets cold around the pond, sometimes.”

“The dogs are good today,” Derek agreed. “There was an Irish Wolfhound puppy leaving right when I got here; you barely missed him.”

“Barry!” he exclaimed, oddly pleased that Derek was that familiar with the park’s regulars. “He's my bud. I got to play with him a little last week; he's probably a foot taller now.”

“At least. Still all gangly limbs, though; he kept tripping over his own feet, like he couldn't figure out how far away they were from his body.”

“Sounds like my college growth spurt. I was - let’s say a late bloomer. Grew four inches all in a rush and kept hitting my head on things.”

Derek was definitely smiling now, his body angled slightly more in Stiles’s direction. “My name’s Derek,” he said. “Hale.”

Stiles felt his entire body droop in response. It was great that Derek was interested in talking to him, but even without exchanging actual words in the hallways at work, he’d assumed he would have at least recognized him as someone he’d seen before. It was clear he hadn't made much of an impression. To anyone. In his entire damn office. “Stiles,” he said morosely. “Stilinski.”

“It's nice to meet you, Stiles Stilinski.”

Stiles squinted at him, trying to read his tone, then erupted. “Okay, seriously? Is it the hoodie? Is it because people think I’m going to follow them into elevators and rob them? Is that why you don't recognize me, because I look like - like some sort of skateboarding hoodlum when I'm not in a collared shirt?” Maybe he looked like one of the college-age kids who hung around his apartment building, trading joints and loudly bragging about the last time the cops had busted them for cocaine. His hoodie was a _nice_ one, though. Newish. And he'd shaved, even. There was no reason for Daphne to have shied away from him like an overbearing stranger had sat down next to her on the bus.

“No,” Derek said slowly, as though being stabbed by an unstable bench-coopting stranger was a more pressing concern than mere robbery. “You look nice. It’s stupid to judge someone by what they wear. And I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“We work together. In the same building. Every day.”

“I know,” Derek said, stopping his tirade in its tracks.

He blinked at him. “What?”

“You're in IT. I've seen you around, but you're never in one place for long enough to talk to. So - it's nice to meet you. Finally. And get a chance to introduce myself.” Derek’s ears had tinted slightly pink at the tips, which was interesting, to say the least. 

“Oh,” he said, not sure where to go from there, with his righteous indignation so effectively snuffed out by Derek’s calm, practical voice.

“Your foil’s leaking,” Derek added, pointing at Stiles’s pants, where the grease from the pizza was, indeed, spreading into a wet patch on his thighs.

He swore and lifted the sagging, soppy mess with one hand, mopping ineffectively at his pants with the other. “I'm glad I wore jeans. This would not have gone over well with my usual clothes.”

“Khakis stain badly,” Derek agreed, then blushed harder when Stiles’s mouth dropped open in response. Not only had Derek seen him around, he'd _noticed_ him.

Maybe the day wasn't an entire loss, then. Or the past few years, for that matter, which was, frankly, a mortifying amount of time to wait to talk to a person, nevermind how unattainable he’d seemed. He straightened his shoulders, confidence flowing back in to replace some of his self-pitying internal dialogues, and peeled open the foil. “Want a slice? I got two, for bad-mood-related reasons, but they're plenty big enough to share.”

Derek turned down the offer but didn't bat an eye when Stiles rolled the slices into a shape that he could more efficiently stuff into his mouth. It was another promising sign: more than one prospective partner had gone green around the gills when dining with him. Their loss. Sue him, he enjoyed his food. As long as it was the right sort of food, and not some congealed mass in a cold dish.

Derek had packed a sandwich and had already finished eating it before Stiles had arrived, he explained as Stiles licked the last bits of grease from his fingers. “It's part of why Barry was eager to spend time with me,” he admitted, looking adorably shy about bribing a puppy to pay attention to him. Hell, he was probably holding back an extra tidbit about how he'd brought actual dog biscuits to the park. It was beginning to seem like something he'd do, then deny while stroking a puppy’s soft ears.

As if to prove this point, a corgi bumbled over to sniff around their feet, panting longingly after the greasy foil Stiles had crumpled into a ball and set on the bench. Derek leaned down to snap his fingers at the dog, and it licked his hand and let him pet it for a minute before trotting off on stumpy legs in search of other treats. The dog’s owner, a pretty woman who’d been standing back and eyeing Stiles speculatively, probably wishing he'd leave so she could talk to Derek, followed after it.

“I was going to ask if you come here often, but that sounds like a bad pickup line, doesn’t it?”

Derek gently wiped his slobbery fingers on the stack of napkins Stiles had placed between them, momentarily anchored by the foil but in imminent danger of flying away in the slightest gust of wind. “I do, fairly often. When it's not raining, or too cold to stay outside for long. It's mostly okay, though. One of the advantages of living in California, I suppose.”

Stiles experienced a brief, terrible mental flash of Derek in a sleek overcoat buttoned to his chin, wearing the leather gloves he usually pulled out around January or February, depending upon how heavily their version of winter descended. The first time he’d seen Derek emerging from the elevator, unwrapping a chunky scarf from around his throat and peeling off buttery-soft gloves, he’d nearly choked on his tongue and had to fling himself around the corner and to the bathroom before Derek could witness him embarrassing himself.

Judging from the afternoon’s unexpected revelations, that might’ve been a lost cause for far longer than his misplaced pride in his stealth had led him to believe. But - Derek had been the one to wave him over, hadn’t he? He could have, without any effort at all, ignored him and maintained their weird silence until Stiles finally got fed up enough with the office to quit and find something that didn’t regularly make him want to shave off his eyebrows in frustration.

He hated his job. A lot. In case that wasn't obvious to anyone who'd ever met him. He tried not to, most days - the money was decent, and he wasn’t sure what he’d prefer to be doing in its place. But some mornings, the only things that gave him the motivation to drag himself out of bed were Heather and Danielle at the bagel shop, who both knew him by name and spread on extra helpings of cream cheese without being asked, and the possibility of a distant glimpse of Derek.

Derek was, implausibly, even more stunning close up. His cheekbones were sharply defined under his well-groomed beard, his eyes startlingly green-grey-gold-who-the-fuck-knows and framed by dark lashes. He could’ve easily stepped straight out of a makeup ad or any type of professional photoshoot. People in real life just didn’t _look_ like that. Stiles carefully pinched himself to make sure he wasn’t deep in yet another alarm-oblivious dream that would fade away into the cold morning air as soon as he gave in and opened his eyes, half an hour late for work and less panicked about the fact than he should've been.

“What about you?” Apparently-Real-Life-Derek prompted, when Stiles was silent for too long. “I don't think I've ever seen you here or at the pond. Maybe I missed you because your dress shirts made you blend in too much before.”

He was flirting, Stiles realized abruptly. Clumsily, like he didn't do it often, and wasn't certain of his welcome. It was charming as hell.

He couldn’t leave him hanging, then, could he? He twisted his body around to better view him, propping his arm on the back of the bench so he could rest his chin on his hand. “In that case, I'm going to prize this hoodie from now on. Maybe even frame it. I meant it as a lazy seasonal nod, but this outcome’s much better.” He winked, and Derek ducked his head shyly. Not stern or standoffish, then; just a guy on the quiet side who would’ve gladly spent time with Stiles if he’d gotten off his ass and stopped hiding from him much earlier. What an idiot he’d been.

“Want to see something?” Derek asked.

Stiles nodded rapidly, too eager to be cool.

Derek bent down and tugged up the leg of his crisply pressed slacks to reveal a bright red and green sock with a googly-eyed reindeer emblazoned on the ankle.

Stiles blinked at him - he wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it certainly hadn’t been that - and snorted with laughter as Derek shook the fabric back down to cover it.

“Gift from one of my sisters,” Derek explained. “I hate them, but I thought - the party was today, and I didn’t want to be a complete grinch.”

“Not sure it counts if you’re hiding your triple-sized heart under your clothes. Or - you know what I mean.” Derek arched an eyebrow at him, as though he _did_ know where Stiles’s thoughts were taking him - to the firm, solid body beneath those neat layers, the taste of his skin against his tongue, his heartbeat pulsing under his hands.

 _I’d cherish you_ , he thought, stupidly, as though he knew Derek at all. But - he wanted to get to know him. In every way he could manage.

“Yet you’re eating pizza out here with me,” Derek pointed out. “Not sure _you_ have any grounds to lecture me on proper holiday behavior when you’re also skipping the potluck.”

“Couldn’t stand it.” He considered whether to elaborate further. Derek wasn’t _his_ boss, or directly connected to his department, but he was highly placed in the company and could take offense at his uncensored opinions. He could very well be shooting himself in the foot if he opened up too quickly. 

“The food or the party?” Derek asked, sounding genuinely curious, and not like he’d file a formal complaint or - worse - talk to Harris about his attitude.

“Both. I don’t know; usually I can make it through, but this year - I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had to get outside.” He described the interactions with Daphne and Bobby, as well as the unappealing culinary contributions by the rest of the staff. He finished laying out the table’s contents with, “Someone brought butter. Not a sourdough loaf with butter or anything like that - just two sticks of butter, still wrapped, set in a bowl.”

“Could be a minor rebellion,” Derek said. When Stiles scrunched his forehead in question, he shrugged. “Maybe not, but I could see it as someone’s reaction to Greenberg’s ultimatum - I had to shell out ten bucks for my share, since I didn’t sign up to bring anything.”

“Huh.” Stiles rolled the idea around in his mind. “If so, I almost wish I’d stuck around to see who the person was. I wouldn't mind befriending them. It’s a better fuck you than mine; all I did was find an excuse to leave the room any time I saw him coming with his collection bucket.”

“He'll track you down,” Derek assured him. “He keeps a list. I'm surprised he didn't corner you before you left the building today.”

“I'm invisible,” Stiles said, shrugging. “He probably doesn't even know I work there. Guess it's an advantage in some areas.”

“You're not invisible,” Derek said. He paused to think about it, his eyebrows somehow managing to telegraph his entire thought process. Stiles couldn't believe he'd assumed he was stoic and grim; he simply hadn't been close enough to read his expressions before, or the nuanced emotions that rapidly shifted across his face. “Daphne’s been needing glasses for years, and refusing to admit it. But the rest - it might be because people aren't used to seeing you on your own,” he suggested, his eyebrows scrunched a bit in sympathy.

“On my own?” he asked, puzzled.

“Without your friend. You were kind of a package deal around the office; even though you worked in different departments, it was rare to see one of you without the other for any extended period of time.”

“You mean Scott?” Derek nodded. “Huh. I didn't think we spent _that_ much time together at work. Enough for me to lose my own identity, anyway.”

“It's not that,” he said, sounding a bit frustrated that Stiles kept belaboring the point. “People know who you are. But - you coordinated your costumes for Halloween. Every year. I think it's taking people some time to process that you're not StilesandScott anymore.”

Stiles picked at the ball of foil, his mood dipping again. “It's taking me a while, too. I'm happy for him - he's got a great job now. A lot more money, and independence, and it made it possible to be closer to his girlfriend.”

“But you miss him.”

He lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug. It didn't require an answer; wasn't it obvious? He'd taken this job because it'd meant he could work with Scott. He'd figured they'd stick it out for a year or two, cheerfully complaining about their bosses and the general boredom of a corporate gig, then track down other careers that would be more fulfilling. What he hadn't realized was that Scott would do exactly that - rising through the ranks of the sales team, then being poached by Argent Corp., too tempted by their hefty salary bump and Allison Argent’s dimpled smile to even consider saying no.

Not that Stiles would have let him. He'd essentially pushed Scott out the door, reminding him of his bright, promising future every time Scott expressed misgivings. And now he was the one stuck in a job that made him feel like his brains were melting out of his ears. It was a terrible, selfish thought, but he'd - well, he’d always expected to be the one who would forge ahead and tug Scott along after him. He hadn’t known he’d be the loser hitting a dead end in his twenties.

“So is that why you couldn't stand being at the party this year?” Derek asked.

Stiles frowned around the idea. It hadn't been a conscious reason, but - yes, probably. The office felt stark and empty and unfriendly without Scott there as his buffer. It'd been, like Derek said, ScottandStiles for a long time - longer than Derek knew. Since they were kids and Stiles had latched onto the cheerily smiling nurse’s son, who’d laughed at Stiles’s stories, but not in a mean way. Scott was always the more congenial and approachable of the two of them: he'd charm his teachers and employers without even meaning to, while Stiles slogged along making enemies without particularly caring about it.

He had Scott, so what else did he need? Of course, he hadn't factored in the idea of possibly _losing_ Scott at one point, once they both grew up enough to not spend all their spare time together.

“One of the reasons,” he allowed. “But these shitty office parties are the most agonizing days of the year; it's always been hard to handle, but it's definitely worse when I don't have someone to complain to about it.”

“You could have me,” Derek said, looking earnest and shy about it.

“It's not the same,” Stiles said, then wished he could bite back the words when he saw Derek’s shoulders begin to curl with rejection. He hadn't meant he didn't _want_ him. Obviously. In what world would _that_ be the case, especially now that they'd had a bit of time to actually start to get to know each other? He'd only meant Scott's friendship was a unique, familial-style relationship that involved Stiles occasionally being an outright asshole and regularly saying shitty things about people and Scott not judging him for it. 

Whatever was on offer with Derek wouldn't be the same. For…so many reasons. One being how badly he wanted to stop talking and focus on whether Derek’s lips were as firm as they looked, or if they'd be soft under the insistent press of his. And another hooked to the fact that Derek might not be as willing to let Stiles verbally rip apart his weekdays by griping about where they spent the majority of their time. “Although it's true that Scott didn’t actually hate the office,” he mused. “Not that...I do. Um. I'm grateful for my job. It's a great company. Doing good things. Important for society and shit.” He rapped his knuckles on the bench slats for emphasis, trying to shut himself up.

Derek moved his hand in what seemed like an aborted attempt to touch Stiles - to reassure him he didn't sound like a blathering fool, maybe, or simply to stop him from making that obnoxious noise for any longer. Somehow, the distance between them had shortened, both of them shifting closer together without consciously noticing it. On his part, at least: he felt drawn to Derek, wanting to slide right into his space to test out how their bodies felt against each other, but he hadn't intentionally done anything to make that happen.

He lifted his eyes from that easy-to-cross distance to meet Derek’s intent gaze.

“I like my job,” Derek admitted, as though Stiles would judge him for not spending every day resisting the urge to curl up in a ball under his desk. “But I can't stand the parties. I know how to socialize when there's a purpose, but the party zone stopped being bearable years ago. It's exhausting. I haven't been to one in ages.”

Stiles was torn between asking him to disclose his secrets for repercussion-free avoidance and calling bullshit on the claim, because: “I saw you at Halloween, though. Didn't talk to you, but - definitely saw you there. And you said you remembered my costume, and Scott’s.”

Derek grinned. “The key is to show up at the beginning and the end. If you make an appearance shortly before the party starts, disappear for the bulk of it, then swing back in for the costume contests or speeches or whatever’s planned for that particular one, no one will even stop to wonder whether you were there the entire time. Especially if you make sure to get in the background of a few shots for the office slideshow.”

“That's brilliant,” Stiles said. He meant to keep the next statement to himself, but the words slipped out anyway, too true to hold back. “I'm about a thousand percent more attracted to you now right now. Which is saying a lot, considering I thought I'd already hit my max.”

Derek ducked his head again, but this time he looked up at Stiles through his eyelashes, with an expression that left him lightheaded.

“Woozy,” Stiles said, then mimed what might've been some weird explosion traveling from his head to his chest. “You make me fucking weak in the knees. What is that?”

“I think it's called attraction,” Derek said dryly, but he hadn't lost the smile that completely transformed his face from its usual pristinely untouchable beauty to something warmer and more welcoming. Like sunshine spilling over a mountain range, its golden pools of light revealing everything you hadn't believed until then you might be able to reach.

“Magnetism,” he said wistfully, moving his debris out of the way so he could scoot along the bench a bit more - deliberately, this time, with both of them aware of where this was heading.

“I've been wanting to meet you officially for a while,” Derek said. “I wanted to ask - there was this tiki bar that opened up a few blocks away, and you and Scott dressed up as Gilligan and the Skipper for Halloween, so I thought - you might like to check it out. Have some tropical drinks. Make fun of the decor.”

“That was two years ago,” Stiles said, close enough now to count each of Derek’s eyelashes, to trace the perfect swirling pattern of his beard.

“I know.” He swallowed. “It's been - it's been a while.”

“And you never said anything, in all that time.”

“I did stay for more of that party, to see if I could bring it up. I even ate some of Bobby’s pasta surprise, which was worse, I think, than the butter sticks.”

“Wait, was that the one with the gummy worms? And jalapenos? Oh my god. I tried that, too. I made Scott eat the rest of mine after I gagged out the first mouthful.” As declarations of interest went, this was a pretty unique and compelling one. There weren’t a lot of people who’d voluntarily hang around at an event they hated and eat the world’s worst food just to try for a moment alone with him. And fail, apparently. “I do remember you being there, because you’re pretty much impossible to miss, but we definitely didn’t interact. I can’t believe you were trying to talk to me, and I had no idea.”

Derek shrugged, somehow making even that movement look graceful. “You never seemed interested. You'd always kind of - leave, whenever I got anywhere near you. I didn't want to be the asshole who can't take a hint. It's - I've been there before. On the other side.”

“I was intimidated,” Stiles said. “I was an idiot. We can talk about all that later, and how stupid it is to spend so much time obsessing over something that you miss the one good thing about your terrible job.”

“My job’s not terrible,” Derek protested, weakly, like he didn't actually care that much but wanted to make the point.

“You don't work for Adrian Harris.”

“I don't like Adrian,” he agreed, and Stiles added that to the growing list of reasons he was massively, irrevocably into Derek.

“He knows basically nothing about what we do, and less about how to manage anyone, including himself, but he's been there so long, he can't really be dislodged. I hate it. And he hates me, because I accidentally told him how bad he was at his job.”

“Accidentally.”

“Once or twice.”

Derek laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “This puts things into a different perspective. I wish I'd known this earlier. Want to hear another story?”

He scoffed. “I'm nosy as hell and crazy into you. When is the answer ever going to be no?”

The tips of Derek’s ears were pink, still, so he reached out to touch them, figuring that maybe that was allowed now. Derek didn’t twitch away at the gesture; his voice shook a bit at first but evened out as he went on. “I thought that maybe you hadn't noticed me, and if I got your attention, we could talk, you know. So I pretended to break something on my computer to have an excuse to submit a support ticket.”

He pulled his hand back in dismay. “I never saw that ticket! I've never seen _any_ tickets from you, actually. Although - I'm not sure if I would've had the guts to respond to it, anyway.”

“That's what I'd figured happened. That you’d seen it and shuffled it off on someone else, I mean. Danny came over instead - Danny Mahealani.”

“That bastard. He never told me about this.” _Handsome_ bastard, he added in his own head, wondering whether Danny had used the opportunity to hit on him, but Derek didn’t seem to be heading in that direction with his story. 

“When I asked about you - whether you weren’t at work that day, although I was pretty sure I’d seen a glimpse of you around a corner after one of my meetings - he said you were at lunch. But it was around 3 PM, so I assumed he was covering for you, and you hadn’t wanted to talk to me for whatever reason.”

“No, I _was_ at lunch, I’m sure. That’s why we haven’t run into each other here before; Harris refuses to let me leave until I’m literally the _last_ person who hasn’t eaten yet. He claims it’s so someone’s always around to cover the phones and tickets, but he’s a fucking liar. It’s because he hates my guts.”

Derek’s forehead furrowed. “That doesn’t sound legal. Or at least within the bounds of how our office functions. I’m sure you could report him for that.”

“To who? HR? Daphne, who’ll lock herself in her office if she sees me?” He sighed. “No, it’s - it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. I’m going to put the complaining on hold for today, because I’m much more interested in kissing you right now. I mean - if that’s okay with you.”

“I can take a hint,” Derek said, and smiled at him. 

“And if that tiki bar’s still around, we could go there, later. See if they’re playing tropical Christmas songs. Get all this off on the right foot.”

“I haven’t minded waiting for you,” Derek said, which was too ridiculous to warrant any response other than the one he’d already promised.

Derek’s lips _were_ firm, he discovered quickly, but yielded easily under his. He followed Stiles’s lead, responding with hungry enthusiasm to each new angle he tried. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, and the wind picked up, sending a chill down the back of Stiles’s neck and making him shiver.

“You okay?” Derek asked, his voice languid and happy, his lips kiss-swollen and immensely appealing.

“Mmm,” Stiles said. “It’s getting cold out. Fuck the rest of the party - what do you say about calling in sick for the afternoon and starting off the weekend now?”

Beautiful, dedicated, responsible Derek actually stopped to think about it, even though Stiles had been mostly joking. “I have a phone call I shouldn’t miss,” he said sorrowfully. “But - can I see you tonight? After work?”

“Obviously,” Stiles said. He had no intention of sticking with this job for any longer than he needed, but it’d done him well, in the end. Douchey boss and awkward social engagements aside, he had to admit it hadn’t been half-bad. And as far as Derek was concerned? Well, he wasn’t planning on letting that budding relationship fade away. Not if he could help it.

The way Derek tightened his fingers on his hips and tilted his face up to be kissed again, he figured the two of them were on the same page. Finally.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a [fic recs blog](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/) and a [regular blog](http://paintedlandscape.tumblr.com/), and you're welcome to find me on either/both. I tend to ramble more on [twitter](https://twitter.com/paintedrecs).


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